1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to novel polyaniline derivatives which are soluble or capable of swelling in organic solvents and form a self-standing film, and also to their production process.
2. Description of the Related Art
Investigation has been conducted in recent years with a view toward applying polyanilines as new electronic materials or electroconductive materials in a wide variety of fields such as cell electrode materials, antistatic materials, electromagnetic shielding materials, functional devices--e.g., photoelectric transducers, optical memories and various sensors--, display devices, various hybrid materials, transparent electroconductors, and various terminal equipment.
Polyanilines however have a highly developed .pi.-conjugated system. They are hence accompanied by the serious drawbacks that they are insoluble in most organic solvents and do not melt even when heated due to having a rigid main chain and the existence of strong interaction and strong hydrogen bonds between polymer chains, and also have poor moldability and permit neither cast molding nor coating.
They are therefore formed, for example, into electroconductive composite materials by impregnating base materials of a desired shape--such as fibers, porous bodies or the like of high-molecular materials--with their corresponding aniline monomers and then bringing the monomers into contact with a suitable polymerization catalyst or subjecting the monomers to electropolymerization to polymerize the monomers. As an alternative, such aniline monomers are polymerized in the presence of powder of a thermoplastic polymer to obtain similar composite materials.
In the meantime, polyanilines soluble in N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone alone has also been synthesized by suitably choosing the polymerization catalyst and reaction temperature [M. Abe et al.: J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun., 1989, 1736)]. These polyanilines are however practically insoluble in other general organic solvents so that their application field is limited.
Further, though polyaniline derivative solubles in organic solvents have been produced using various kinds of aniline derivatives, they are impossible to form a film having sufficient elasticity. On the other hand, if a high molecular compound is capable of gelation, it can be processed by means of techniques such as gel stretching, gel spinning or gel molding, etc.